Now, in front of their parents, he was harder somehow. Yes— a lot had happened since they'd left.
Their mother sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. "Where is Eydis?"
Silence became the fifth being in the room. On one side, Herrick stood with his brother, both changed in ways that could not be easily described with words. On the other side, their parents sat side by side, their hands clasped as they provided a united regency… as they always did, even with their sons.
For the first time in his life, Herrick felt like he stood worlds apart from his parents. He loved them, but they had sheltered themselves within the confines of their walls and forgotten that an entire world lay outside of their home. Their sons had loved and grieved, fought and lost since they'd seen each other last. And there was no way to explain it all to them.
"Dead," Hakon replied quietly. The darkness in his voice was still pained but bearable somehow. "She's joined Odin in Valhalla."
"We're sorry, son," Father said. "She was a lovely girl."
Hakon nodded roughly once.
"Perhaps this means that the Allfather has a different plan—"
"No," Hakon said sharply, cutting off their mother before she could finish her sentence. "Eydis' death will not be another avenue for you to get me to marry someone else for the sake of thecrown."
"Hakon—," their father started to say.
"I saidno," Hakon seethed now, the air around him growing cold as he pulled on the moisture in the atmosphere and froze it in his anger. "When is that going to be enough for you? When will you stop trying to mold me into someone you wished I were rather than who I actually am?"
"But my love, the treaty—"
"The treaty was broken when Helvig started plotting against the rest of the continent in the name of his greed," Herrick growled. Never had he spoken to his parents this way, but he'd had enough of hearing about thetreaty. "It was broken when he ordered the capture of allvitkiin Logi. It was broken when he held innocent people prisoner tostealtheirgalderfrom them. It was broken when he ordered his General toburn meandsuffocate mefor information heknewI didn't have."
If the gods had decided to descend from the heavens and wage war against their people, it would not have been louder than the shocked silence of the Council Room.
"But more than that," Herrick seethed, his fury taking on a life of its own. "The treaty was broken the day it was forged between our family and the Helvigs two hundred years ago. When our ancestors decided to cut off their people at the knees all in the name of greed, we doomed ourselves. No wonder the gods have been interfering withgalderin this land— its all in retaliation to our power hungry families."
Silver lined his mother's eyes as his father's jaw clenched. He didn't care that he'd dropped that in their laps so crudely; enough was enough.
"We didn't know," Mother said softly, breaking the tension.
"How could you when you keep your head buried in the dirt? How could you know when you never bothered to question anything that was handed to you?" Herrick spat out before turning on his heel and heading for his room.
He needed to change out of his civilian clothing so he could don the horrible General's uniform that hung in the back of his wardrobe, surely still stale and musty as the last time he'd worn it. Perhaps he would ask Maude to air it out with theirgalder— then, at least, it would smell like her.
As he shut the door of the War Room behind him, Herrick felt like the last chains that kept him from who he was meant to be finally fell away.
His parents loved him— that was obvious— but they had put the crown and the treaty before everyone else a long time ago, and Herrick was not about to let himself be weighed down by restrictions he had not set for himself. It was finally time to let that darker side of him free, and he knew just the right person to pull that out of him.
47
Maude tried to distance herself from the screams of the sergeant currently tied to a post in waist-deep water by humming the tune to a song her mother used to sing to her as a child. It wasn't because she felt bad for the man, but rather because the dagger on her hip that had once been so familiar to her now begged for bloodshed. She wasn't sure how she knew; only that she felt drawn to the blade that seemed to have awakened since reuniting with its counterpart— theleifr Hela.
The dungeons in the Palace of Ocean and Clay were deep beneath the surface it stood on, only accessed by a dark tunnel lined with limestone and deep veins of shining black that she couldn't help running her fingers over as they led them to the shoreline. In the small grotto, the water would rush in at high tide and almost fully submerge the cells. The prisoners would be held with loose chains so they could tread water until the moon pulled the tides back out. Most would die before the waters could recede enough to give them a reprieve from their exhaustion.
It was brutal, even by Maude's standards.
The damp air tasted of salt and was thick with the minerals of the deep earth the tunnels carved through until the air had changed along with the walls of the tunnels. Once the veins of black threaded through the walls, sulfur had filled their senses. The further they walked, the stronger it had become until it was so heavy that it made Maude's eyes water. Their footsteps had been muffled by puddles of water that dripped from the ceiling, the small pools in the dark tunnel casting droplets of water onto every surface with a small splash with each step they had taken.
All too quickly, Maude had started to feel the walls closing in on her as she remembered the last time she had been walking through cave tunnels so similar to this one.
The way the fire flickered against the walls, the way the air was wet and musty at the same time— all of it reminded Maude of Eydis' final moments as they fought their way out of the Knotted Caverns. She'd pulled up the hood of her cloak around her face as if to block out the memories of her friend taking a last, ragged breath, and that was where it had remained as Bryn interrogated the sergeant.
Tied to a post with his arms behind his back, their prisoner remained tight-lipped and had been that way since Maude had tossed him into the water to wake him before restricting his movements with her watergalder. He stood in waist-deep water only a few feet from the lip that jutted out from the edge, the small stone parapet in front of him big enough for Bryn to question him without having to submerge herself in the water with him.
From Maude's side, where she clung to the shadows, Dahlia leaned against the wall with her eyes closed as she kept her connection to the man steady. She would signal if he were getting too close to succumbing to their questioning.
